Coffee recipes from the collection just in time for National Coffee Day.

To Make a Good Coffee - Keepers of the Hearth

To make a good coffee from Keepers of the hearth : based on records, ledgers and shared recipes of the families connected with Mill Prong House, Edinborough Road, Hoke County, North Carolina.

How to Spice Up Coffee - Pass the Plate

How to spice up coffee from Pass the plate : the collection from Christ Church.

Cafe brulot- High Hampton Hospitality

Cafe Brulot from High Hampton hospitality.

Aunt Irene's Iced Coffee - Heavenly Delights

Aunt Irene’s Iced Coffee from Heavenly delights.

Cognac-Coffee Dessert - Southern Cookbook

Cognac-Coffee Dessert from Marion Brown’s southern cook book.

Coffee Ice Cream - Sweet Carolina

Coffee Ice Cream from Sweet Carolina : favorite desserts and candies from the Old North State.

Cancun Coffee - Best of the Best

Cancun Coffee from Best of the best from North Carolina : selected recipes from North Carolina’s favorite cookbooks.

Coffee punch - Good Eatin' from Duke Memorial

Coffee Punch from Good eatin’ from Duke Memorial United Methodist Church, Durham, North Carolina.

They’re at it again … and so are we.

Although television ads for the U.S. Senate race have been at saturation level since early summer, the traditional campaign season started just this month. Before long our mailboxes will be filled with postcards, letters, and flyers touting or demonizing one candidate or another. You may not love this, but we in the North Carolina Collection do. The North Carolina Collection attempts to document the heritage of the state—and that includes our politics. Would you save the political postcards, letters, and flyers that you receive and send them to the North Carolina Collection?

We’re interested in races at all levels—county sheriff to senator. We would like our collection to be representative of the whole state, both geographically and ideologically. Those of you who are registered as independents are likely to get the most mailings. People who are registered with a party affiliation will get fewer, but many of us have family members or friends who are independents or whose politics differ from ours. Would you consider asking them for the mailings that they get? Whatever you collect can be put in a box or envelope and send them to:

North Carolina Collection
P.O. Box 8890
CB 3930, Wilson Library
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC 27515-8890

We collected over 1,400 pieces of campaign ephemera relating to the 2008 election and somewhat more than that in 2012. Let’s do it again!

Passenger pigeon dung: A cure for what ailed you?

“In the eyes of some, passenger pigeon parts [beyond the feathers used for stuffing pillows and beds] held one more valuable property: medicinal.

“Dr. John Brickell, writing on the natural history of North Carolina in 1737, stated that the blood was effective in the treatment of the eyes and, when swallowed, ‘cures bloody fluxes.’

“He also had a good word for the dung, saying it could relieve most anything that ails, including headaches, pleurisy, apoplexy and lethargy. How the physician administered the dung is left obscure.”

— From “A Feathered River Across the Sky: The Passenger Pigeon’s Flight to Extinction” by Joel Greenberg (2014)

For everything you could ever imagine wanting to know about the passenger pigeon in North Carolina, check out Greenberg’s Project Passenger Pigeon.